here's one good thing to come from the destruction of hurricane sandy-- verizon customers will be getting faster, and more, telecom services. the company said today it is replacing damaged copper wires with fiber optic cable. that upgrade from older, slower copper allows verizon to offer more digital services, including bundling phone, internet and cable tv. and it means an increase in revenues for verizon. tom, that was the message from verizon's c.e.o., speaking at an investor conference today. but it didn't do much for the stock. verizon shares fell, like many of its fellow dow components trading here on the big board. >> tom: let's get going with tonight's "mark focus." with no big economic data for cues, stocks finished a lackluster day in negative territory. the s&p 500 struggled to find a clear direction and spent most of the session in the red. it ended with a small loss of two tenths of 1%. trading volume continued to be moderate-- 674 million shares on the big board; under 1.8 billion shares traded on the nasdaq. we saw small sector moves, as well. the telecommunications sector'